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Former undercover West Midlands officer Ronnie Howard previously said cash paid to informants was publicly money well spent - and revealed he had once given £15,000 to a criminal.

He said: “There is a danger that if you recruit someone to be informant who is a drug dealer, what you will find is they will be supplying information about other drug dealers - who are their competition.

“Using informants to arrest criminals is the most economical way to do it. It is an extremely cheap way to detect serious crimes.

“The most I ever paid was £15,000 because he gave us information over period of 12 months that resulted in us recovering £3 million of cannabis.”

Neil Woods undercover: Pix courtesy of www.ukleap.org

Yet former undercover police officer Neil Wood ]questioned some of the payments.

He said: “It can be effective for certain crimes but for others - such as the war on drugs - using informants merely ensures that the cycle of violence and brutality continues.

“Nobody wants to inform on the drug lords because of fears of violent reprisals, so it’s only the low-lying fruit that gets caught out - and the trade continues regardless.

“Nobody can call that effective. It does little to bring down the level of overall crime.”

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The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for covert human intelligence sources, Deputy Chief Constable Roger Bannister, said: “The use of informants to assist in investigations is one resource used by police forces across the country to defend and protect the public.

“The intelligence provided helps to prevent and solve the most serious of crimes and is vital in bringing offenders to justice through the courts.

“This is a well-established and highly regulated tactic with the money paid to informants being very closely scrutinised.”